J.D. Salinger has died at the age of 91.

I’ve always admired Salinger for his unshakable dedication to craft rather than publication. I love the line quoted in this article: “There’s. . .peace in not publishing.” Read that full quote. Read it and understand it. Read it and apply it to your allegiance to your own life. Read it and make your peace.

Salinger was a craftsperson. He created living, breathing, three-dimensional characters moving and speaking in a real world not because he thought those were the characters that would sell, but because that’s what made him happy. He wrote because he loved to write. And he certainly lived to regret the publicity that came with accidentally striking a nerve with his readership.

I have a theory about Salinger’s work and his desperate determination to guard his privacy. I think Salinger loved a man once, a brother-type (he had no brothers), someone he looked up to who taught him a little about philosophy and life and meaning. Someone who died young.

I think he wrote his books as an expression of his love for that man. And I think he guarded his privacy to prevent the media from discovering who it was and defacing that man’s memory.

Salinger gave every indication that he continued to write long after he stopped publishing and even granted his heirs permission to publish what he was writing—earn whatever they wanted from it—so long as they waited until he was gone.

We can be pretty certain the next few years will not only see a goldmine of Salinger stories hitting the market, but I believe we’ll also learn who the model for Seymour Glass really was, how Salinger knew him, and where he died.

My opinion? I have no doubt this all happened in France, a very long time ago.

Well, Amazon is coming out of the chute swinging this week. The good news is that they’re acknowledging the competition by fighting for independently-publishing authors with their 70%-royalty offer for Kindle books. For the record, 70% is a seriously high royalty rate.

Just a year ago, Publishing Frontier ran an article discussing Amazon’s position in the industry and predicting their future. It’s an interesting analysis.

Andrew Savikas has a good post on the O’Reilly site on “why the Apple-talking-to-publishers news isn’t really news.”

And this week Lulu announced they’re going public. This may or may not make a lot of difference for Lulu authors, but it will matter to anyone with money who’s banking on Lulu’s business success. Which looks pretty rosy.

Meanwhile, Daemon News reports that some geeks turned a Barnes and Nobles Nook into a web tablet. Voided their warranty, but hey, now they’ve got a computer! Oh, and by the way—I don’t recommend going for the marketing game that says the Nook isn’t capitalized. That’s trying to play on the grammatical convention that brand names are capitalized, while normal vocabulary words in a language are not. I’m sorry, Barnes and Noble: I don’t think so.

The name of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt’s parent company, EMPG, is being bandied about, as Barry O’Callaghan’s three-card monte attitude toward stockholders is revealed in this week’s financial avalanche.

Also, Borders continues to tank. Publishers Marketplace reports that Borders is in trouble now for delaying payment to small publishers, although they seem to be keeping the big publishers happy enough (thanks, guys, for your support of independent business owners in these troubled times.) They are also apparently playing around with reporting periods in order to make their numbers look better, but honestly? Beethoven’s Fifth.

On the hurrah side of the ledger:

Santa Cruz’s Logos Books and Records has survived Borders’ attempt to wrest their business away from them. When we rented our little house in the Santa Cruz Mountains to the then-new manager of the then-new Borders in downtown in 2000, the random public out-cry against franchise domination actually crossed the line into personal violence, scaring the wits out of a perfectly nice young woman. She moved to Hawaii. We sold the house. Fortunately, Logos just kept right on doing what Logos does, which is sell great books to people who love them, and they, like Modern Times Bookstore of San Francisco and Powell’s Books of Portland, Oregon, are still alive and thriving.

Hey, what great bookstores do you guys frequent? Can we compile an esoteric list of faves, so when we travel to each other’s parts of the world we’ll know where to check in when we arrive?

Let’s talk a little about the self-marketing tsunami. Because it is huge. It is compelling. And it is omnipresent.

Can you turn your novel into a career, if you’re just willing to do the necessary legwork?

Well, first I’d suggest you look deep in your heart and ask yourself whether or not there’s a tiny little hyperactive ADD OCD bipolar marketer secretly living there.

Gary Vaynerchuk’s marketing video for his book Crush It! is a case-in-point. Vaynerchuk has apparently succeeded in self-marketing to the extent that he’s got a whole book’s worth of advice on it. Kudos to Vaynerchuk! And his video (self-marketing his self-marketing) backs him up: as a self-marketer, he’s good.

You’ll find other writers out there writing and blogging about how they did it, they turned their book into a money-making machine, all through their native pluck and ingenuity and the utter miracle of the Internet. Their angle is always that not only did they do it, but, gosh darn it, you can, too!

On the other hand, there’s Mr. Longevity, Bob Spear over at Book Trends Blog, who has a history of self-publishing that dates back to 1989. Keep in mind that Bob has a highly-qualified specialty he was writing about, it was non-fiction, and Bob marketed his butt off. He was putting in 12-18 hour days for years, touring, speaking, giving workshops on his specialty, spending his own money (including taking out a 2nd mortgage), while simultaneously running a catalog business out of his basement, and, in his day job—yeah, he still had one—running a bookstore (the one with the 2nd mortgage). And, in the process, Bob wore himself down to a shadow. . .until he finally couldn’t take it anymore and had to quit.

Alan Rinzler got a commenter last year who said he’s looking into getting a traditional publisher now that he’s sold 65,000 copies of his self-published book. Alan replied—with what I consider admirable self-restraint, to put it mildly—that 65k is a DAMN RESPECTABLE number of self-published copies! Heck, yes, it is. Just about 55,000 more copies than you need to get a traditional publisher interested, and just about 64,927 copies more than the average self-publisher manages to pawn off on family and friends.

What’s really happening with these people?

Are these stories based on the rising wave of entrepreneurial success being brought to us by the blogosphere, in which it turns out Andy Warhol was right—in the future everyone is famous for 15 minutes? Or are they freak lightning strikes? Is it Reader’s Digest or Ed McMahon? And how can we tell?

Well, let’s crack this stuff open and find the hidden assumptions these stories are based on.

Assumption #1: IF you’re willing to do the work, you can sell 65k (or at least 10k) of your novel. You just have to do the research (read books like Crush It!), put in the hours, and have the desire. Of course, it helps a whole lot if you approach it with dogged, unswayable, death-grip determination. But. . .You can do it!

This assumption sets aside all considerations related to the book itself, as in: is there a sizable market for your subject matter? (teenage vampires) Is that market not already saturated? (whoa—teenage vampires) Are you the best person to write a book on this subject matter? Are you doing a professional job of it? And are you bringing something to this market that nobody has ever brought to it before? This also ignores the difference between marketing fiction and non-fiction. Assumption #1 is not concerned with these issues AT ALL. See Attention Deficit Disorder above.

Assumption #1 is also not concerned with the competition. Believe me, people: you have lots of competition. Way more now than twenty or even ten years ago. The rise of the supposed ease of self-marketing through the Internet has created a parallel rise in hopeful aspiring fiction authors planning to take advantage of it. And the more of you who read those self-marketers’ books, watch those videos, listen to those workshop leaders on self-marketing and believe them, the more of you who are prepping yourself this very minute—long before your novel is done—on how to go about marketing that novel into a smashing success, the more of you are fighting tooth and nail over the very same brass rings.

To paraphrase Mark Twain’s father, “Invest in readers. The blogosphere ain’t actually making any more of them.”

You don’t hear a whole heck of a lot from the people who tried self-marketing and failed. Well, obviously. They don’t want anyone to know that about them! That would mean that they alone, out of all the zillions out there trying to build a following by claiming to already have a following, blew it.

You know what I didn’t point out up above about self-marketers writing books on self-marketing? They’re still hustling to sell their books! TO YOU.

Assumption #2: IF you’ve got a sizable market for your subject matter that is not already saturated, AND you’re the best person to write a book on this subject matter BECAUSE you’re both doing a professional job and bringing something to this market nobody has ever brought to it before, THEN you are automatically qualified to be the best marketer for this book. Assumption #2 blurs the distinction between writers and marketers until it’s—hey!—invisible!

Over and over again you hear, “You are your book’s best advocate.” But are you? Just because you know your material, you know the craft of fiction, and you’ve got something unique to say, does that make you your own best salesperson? After all, sales is an industry. Marketing is an industry. The people who succeed in it (to the extent that you’ll need to succeed in order to sell 2, 10, or 65 thousand copies of your book) did not get there by being good at fiction.

Assumption #2 is not concerned with your personal strengths and weaknesses. It is not concerned with whether or not you’re actually any good at marketing, you love salesmanship, and you have experience as a marketer and education in the field, including a basic, instinctive understanding of what motivates people to act, what fires up that timeless gesture of pulling out the old wallet, as opposed to what simply leaves them flat. Assumption #2 turns a blind eye to the fact that writing fiction and marketing are two completely unrelated industries, both of which require steep, rock-strewn learning curves in order to produce even competent professionals.

Assumption #2 operates on the principle that you are, implicitly, willing to devote whatever you must to exploring this industry to its nether reaches as a newbie, sacrificing all else to the pursuit, including the time, energy, and creativity you used to put into fiction, your family, and, um, living your life.

See Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder/bipolar above.

Assumption #3: You are writing fiction IN ORDER to make a bundle; that is your goal. Assumption #3 overlooks all other considerations of the craft. It overlooks the love of the work, the joy of the process, the reason you chose—and continue to choose—fiction as your medium, as opposed to any other form of writing, such as newswriting, non-fiction, or the far-more-lucrative technical writing. Assumption #3 operates on the principle that loving fiction and loving money are one and the same thing.

Sure, we all need to make a living. I love the craft of fiction. I also have a mortgage. In fact, I live in coastal Northern California—my mortgage would probably make you choke on your writers’ workshop bagel. But loving fiction and loving getting my mortgage paid every month are not the same passion.

Are you in a position to devote the kind of time and energy (and your own money) to self-marketing that others around you do in order to succeed? Do you have kids? A spouse? A home you love? Friendly loan officers at your bank? Friends who encourage and support you every step of the way, taking hysterical collect calls in the middle of the night when you need someone to remind you why you’re doing this in the first place? Friends who stay home in order to take your calls, even if that means they get to steal your ideas and put them in their own novels while you’re out pounding the pavement?

The worst part of the whole thing is that traditional publishers are supposed to solve this dilemma for you. Remember the promise? “You give us your books, and we’ll edit, publish, sell, and promote them for you.” Promote them! They used to do that! But they’re stopping. You know why you hear people in the publishing industry plugging self-marketing everywhere you turn? Because even traditional publishers are saying it now: “We don’t market most of the books we publish anymore. You authors have to Do It Yourself.”

Think about it. Think long and hard. Are you, at heart, a writer? Or are you really secretly an aspiring marketer?

Happy New Year 2010 to you all! I hope you had as peaceful a New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day as we did here at our house, ensconced by the fire by a lovely (dying) tree all lit up, towers of new books next to everyone’s chair, sleeping cats on every lap, and Billie Holiday singing “A Fine Romance” over the rumble of an electric model train chugging industriously around and around under the tree.

While I was tipped back in my rocker with my chocolate and Brandy Alexander (thanks to a book called, appropriately enough, Happy Hours by Indian author and columnist Bhaichand Patel—take note of the reference to the novel he’s working on at the end of the interview in the link and ask yourself, “I wonder who he’ll get to edit it?”) reading all five hundred pages of the first ever full-length detective novel, Wilkie Collins’ The Moonstone (published in 1866 and still RIVETING). . .as I say, while I was doing all this, other more dedicated bloggers than I continued to come up with fascinating stuff about writing, which I will re-direct you toward today.

First and foremost, Mira points out on Mira’s List that from now on the IRS is going to be casting a much more jaundiced eye in your direction. Yeah, YOU. I hope every spec of your taxable writing income is all recorded and properly filed, because they apparently feel you guys have been less than utterly and trustingly transparent in your dealings with them in the past. God only knows why.

Cory Doctorow gave a speech in November on the digitial ownership of books, partly transcribed and posted by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, “How To Destroy the Book.” I don’t necessarily adhere to all Doctorow’s theories on copyright, but he’s doing some very heavily-promoted work in the realm, and I’m interested in seeing how it pans out. We’re all groping blind right now—the ground keeps shifting under our feet—but light is being cast more and more on the issue from different angles by some very smart people. (Except for what he named his daughter. That was kind of mean.)

Wil Wheaton wrote a stirring piece on self- (excuse me, “independent-”) publishing with Lulu. This is important to you, personally, because independent publishing is beginning to earn some real spurs in the industry. This past year has seen in the change, and traditional publishers are now looking more and more to independent publishing as the front-line testing ground for salable books. It is a great idea? It is properly executed? It is WELL-EDITED? And is the author 100% personally invested in marketing it, so that sales are already hefty before a traditional publisher ever has to shell out dime? Of course, like Wile E. Coyote, the next thing they’re going to notice is that if all this is true, independently-published authors don’t actually need traditional publishers. But we’ll keep our lips zipped and let that one be a special little surprise.

This is also important to you because. . .drum roll. . .we are going to independently-publish my first book in 14 years, The Art & Craft of Fiction—that’s all the old in-depth blog posts on writing that you miss so much and wish were still posted, edited into a book! Yay! It should go up for sale on this blog sometime in February or earlier, as soon as I finish getting it cleaned up and writing a few extra pieces to round it out. I looked into shopping it around to agents and, by extension, publisher’s acquisitions editors and, by further extension, publishers and, by even further extension, readers, and compared that to the amount of editing, marketing, and promotions work authors are now expected to take responsibility for even if they get past all those hurdles, and, well. . .you remember the special little surprise.

And on the subject of author marketing, Alan Rinzler re-posted (or else it came to me in a dream) an excellent post from 2008 on what criteria a traditional publisher uses in determining what advance to offer an author, with some eye-opening advice about email “direct mail” and speaking to your Kawanis Club.

Speaking of websites (yes, I have been, a LOT), George Revutsky and Dustin Kittelson of the soon-to-be-launched online marketing company MyNextCustomer gave an interview on—not the demise of Search Engine Optimization, as I originally quoted the headline—but the state of online search issues and social media marketing.

On a more casual note, Lauren Leto has analyzed readers by their favorite authors and posted this exhaustive list for those of you too lazy to do it yourselves. Are you on it? I don’t necessarily agree with all of it—I’ve never even heard of some of these authors—but it does appear I should be reading more Jorge Luis Borges. I will be starting my own list for all of us here to contribute to (I think I’ll put Kathryn in charge of the YA section), but not until I get through the rest of my chocolate.

This has nothing to do with writing, but it does demonstrate beautifully that it’s the juxtaposition of essential details that creates action and dimension.

This also has nothing to do with writing, but it does provide a nice excuse for why novels are so much harder to write now than they were ten thousand years ago.

Also, as you’ve probably noticed, we here at A. Victoria Mixon, Editor, have re-designed the website. We have plans—big plans.

• A new interview series, beginning with literary agent Donald Maass and independent editor Lisa Rector-Maass, followed by the second half of my interview with Carolyn Cassady (in which she talks in-depth about making the movie Heart Beat with Sissy Spacek), and then an interview with Guggenheim-recipient, Yaddo artist, five-time O. Henry award-winner, and biographer of both Jane and Paul Bowles, as well as dual-biographer of Isadora Duncan and Mary Cassatt, Millicent Dillon—just to start.
• A new Free Edit event, like the novel HOOKS event of last August, in which I will do Free Edits of your novel CLIMAXES. I hope to start that later this month.
• A secret parallel universe for griping, for those of you who like to gripe, on all subjects relating to fiction, including but not restricted to best sellers that should be lining bird cages, authors who should not be allowed near keyboards, and publishing horror stories from those of you with the scars to prove it. It’s not up yet, but if you keep your eyes open you’ll notice when it does go up.
• More in-depth discussion of the state of the publishing industry, leaning heavily on the way licensing and copyright have already played out in the computer industry, what’s happened in the music industry, how online communities, networking, and marketing are developing even as we speak, and the secret assumptions that lie behind a lot of the opinions being pushed out here regarding what aspiring writers should do to succeed and where and when and how and why.
• And an exciting way to get you some of those old posts back on this blog in a new less-easily-lifted format. They won’t replace the book, but supplement it, as it were. And, as an added bonus, you’ll get to see where I keep my rejection letters.

Finally: the New Year marks the end of my first year of blogging on the craft of fiction.

Thank you, all of you, for reading. Thank you for commenting! Thank you to all the great people I’ve met in this past year. Without you this blog would have gone the way of so many—six months of excitement and then sudden amnesia—but because of you I’ve leaped the abyss from a dead technical-writing career to doing the most fulfilling work in the world (can I still use that word in this decade? yes, I can, because I’m in California): editing gorgeous fiction, discovering amazing unpublished talent, working with dedicated writers who have completely given me back my faith in literature as a living, breathing, life-changing art in this day and age. And you know the condition of modern published fiction.

It’s a miracle!

Thank you—in all sincerity, from the bottom of my heart. Out of the zillions of blogs begun every year, you’ve made this one a success. You guys are my hope and joy. And you’re going to usher in a new Golden Age of Literature.

Dona Nobis Pachem.